Transilience Thought Unifier Model -11

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Dandelion Wine

(The Simple Joys of Yesterday)

“Somewhere, a book said once, all the talk ever talked, all the songs ever sung, still lived, had vibrated way out in space and if you could travel to Far Centauri you could hear George Washington talking in his sleep or Caesar surprised at the knife in his back. So much for sounds. What about light then? All things, once seen, they didn't just die, that couldn't be.

It must be then that somewhere, searching the world, perhaps in the dropping multiboxed honeycombs where light was an amber sap stored by pollen-fired bees, or in the thirty thousand lenses of the noon dragonfly's gemmed skull you might find all the colors and sights of the world in any one year. Or pour one single drop of this dandelion wine beneath a microscope and perhaps the entire world of July Fourth would firework out in Vesuvius showers. This he would have to believe.”

Ray Bradbury

Dandelion Wine - 1957

~~~

The Winds of Change

The first and last shots of the final season premiere of Fringe focus on a dandelion. In the first, a dandelion has gone to seed, its time done. In the last, a newly matured dandelion stands straight and defiant in the middle of scorched earth. Soil proclaimed dead by the Observer, Windmark.

Episode 5.01 closes inside the detritus of an abandoned taxi as a depleted Walter Bishop, a devout disciple of science, led by the prism light of a windchime CD tree; looks for inspiration after being battered by the torturous mind probings of Windmark.

Not through science.

But music.

Walter and Trip Mix #6: Only You - The Search for Amazement

Each season Fringe undergoes a paradigm shift. This season the shift is even larger. For the first time the title credits do not dwell on science but on human rights.

Across graphics of a dark and restrictive world scroll words extolling:

Community

Joy

Individuality

Education

Imagination

Private Thought

Due Process

Ownership

Free Will

Freedom

Even the title card for Season 5 ‘Fringe’ differs greatly. Gone is the smooth machine tooled look of previous seasons. This time an organic, battered but not broken, styling is in play.

Without these freedoms, the oppression of an Observer ruled world blocks the pursuit of the more esoteric pursuits shown in previous season title credits. Freedoms taken for granted in previous seasons have been lost.

The fifth season will be about getting those freedoms back. That is very exciting from a dramatic standpoint for, to paraphrase Jeff Bridges as the Starman from the 1984 John Carpenter film:

‘You are a strange species. Not like any other. Shall I tell you what I find beautiful about you?

You are at your very best when things are at their worst.’

What can be worse to than to be at war? And what other scenarios can offer such a rich and dramatic soil against the scorched earth of 2036 for the actors and writers of Fringe?

Episode 5.01 has already given us glimpses of those possibilities with the ripping apart of the Bishop family and the poignant reunions of Peter and Etta, Walter and Etta, Peter and Olivia, and Olivia and Etta. Reunions we are shown that are just the tip of the relationship iceberg.

There is much to look forward to as this more than capable cast should be handed their most dramatic feast to dine on yet.

We also see the fundamental difference between the Observers and us. They have lost the capacity for wonderment. Music is just noise to them. In 5.01 music is played as the symbol of hope and the catalyst, as mentioned at the top of this review, for Walter to get back up and to get back into the fight.

Season 5 is very much poised to take those themes and goals of the previous seasons that were used for personal interests and apply them for the greater good. It is also should bring to the foreground the emotional core of the show that until now has been disguised behind cases of the week.

Shades of Peter and the Machine, Transilience Thought Unifier is tuned to Walter

Walter has lost the plan

Walter awakened by the CD Light Prism

Trip Mix 6 - Only You

a dandelion stands on scorched earth - shades of the red rose in a vacant building lot from Stephen King’s - The Dark Tower

Scorched Earth Dandelion. 'Hope is a good thing. And good things never die.'Andy Dufresne: The Shawshank Redemption

With most of the expositional burden dealt with now, the amount of telling us character related story points should be minimal. Going forward we should be shown those moments. The focus switch this season means that no longer will there be a paralleling storyline of the case of the week. This season, in every episode, what ever happens will directly involve and impact the characters.

Very good this its review, Old Darth, thanks. After I witnessed this first episode of the thirteen this fifth and final season, I was struck by the strong sense of loneliness, those scenes of streets full of rubble, empty environments, without that usual movement of people, sounds of cars honking at last with the air of life being lived, had nothing similar in these new environments Fringe. Remember me, clearly, the scenes of the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still" in the version of 1951, along with the plastic design of the film "Blade Runner", in street scenes at night, where Walter talks with an unusual geisha, who had a face that looked like a piece of white porcelain. Fringe is always grounded in the style of "strange, unimaginable," now it all adds up to factors of loneliness, destruction, oppression and resistance struggle.

I liked what I saw that first episode, and what I expected, outlines to happen, ie Fringe should have an ending to the level of what has been, for us, counted, I think.

Brilliant, brilliant review as always, Old Darth. I look forward to your thoughts about each episode every week.

One more reunion that was so briefly filmed but bursting with poignancy: Walter and Olivia near the end of the episode ...

I also mentioned this is Josie's review––apologies for repetition––but I also found it fascinating that Peter has done exactly what Walter did when it came to Etta: that the safety of one's child supersedes all else. So the apple hasn't fallen too far from the tree but ... can Peter "na eínai kalýtero ánthropo apó ton patéra sou"?

One further obserview (to borrow a wonderful portmanteau from one of the bloggers here ...): remember that Olivia hesitated in last season's finale before telling Peter that she was pregnant. I wonder if that will have some impact in this season. (One of the interviews that Wyman gave back at the end of last season indicated that it was a significant moment so we should keep our eyes peeled ...)